Load testing Moodle with JMeter
Being the original load testing tool for servers, introduced in 1998(!), JMeter [1] has always been the number one load testing resp. performance measuring tool for Moodle. Around its release 2.5, Moodle developers made the testing process vastly simpler by adding many scripts. The topic of this page are the two scripts Make test course and Make JMeter test plan, both available under Site administration > Development. Together with the set of add-ons Moodle performance comparison they comprise a full set of load testing tools.
Warning: Do not run these scripts on a production system! These scripts generate large amounts of artificial data and load the server to its limit and beyond, making it to bloat and become non-responsive. Don't even run them on a separate Moodle instance in the production server: their effect on the DBMS is undocumented.
Make test course
(Moved to https://docs.moodle.org/39/en/Test_course_generator)
Make JMeter test plan
(Moved to https://docs.moodle.org/39/en/JMeter_test_plan_generator)
Running the test plan on JMeter
JMeter is a Java application so it can run on Windows, Mac, or Linux. It can be run on the command line or on its graphical client on your desktop. First check if Java is installed in your client computer by opening a console and entering ' java -version'. If it doesn't return a version, first install Java on your client. The instructions vary with the operating system.
To install JMeter go to the JMeter page, download the zip and unzip it to the directory of your choice.
To run JMeter. open the /bin subdirectory and use either jmeter.bat on Windows or ./jmeter on Linux. This will open the JMeter GUI.
First step is to go to File -> Open and select the testplan.jmx file. This will open a tree on the left hand side of JMeter. Open the Warm-up site -> Default site request and enter the protocol (http or https) and Server name or IP. Then go to CSV Users Data and locate your users.csv file under Filename. Repeat this for Moodle Test.
Right mouse click on the Test Plan, then Add -> Listener. I choose Aggregate Report so I can follow the run as it happens. Save the changes in your test plan and run it.
